Finally – Britain has decided to leave the European Union. Britons have come to their senses and taken the first step towards dismantling a cabal of conmen and crooks. This has been a long time coming – but I am quite surprised it has happened now, and that it has happened in Britain. I have always taken the view that the British are natural conservatives, and that a radical proposal like leaving the European Union was doomed to failure. It seems that even a conservative people like the British can see the EU for exactly what it is: an undemocratic mess that serves only to harm the people it purports to represent.

Even more surprising than the fact that Britain voted to leave is the fact that Jean-Claude Juncker seems to have no intention of subverting the will of the people. Before the French referendum on the proposed European Union constitution, Juncker said, “If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue’”. And of course, continue they did - rebranding the constitution as the Lisbon Treaty, and implementing it even though it was soundly rejected by the French electorate. Perhaps old Jean-Claude knows that even he is not powerful enough to undo this democratic reckoning.

The problem now lies with the fact that the two main parties have been completely trounced by the people they have been failing for decades. If it weren’t for the First Past the Post system, I suspect we would have seen the death of the main two parties long ago, and the main place in which we have a non-FPTP vote is, ironically, the election for the European Parliament – an election in which UKIP swept to victory on a tide of both anti-EU rage and disdain for the main two parties.

The Labour Party is the guiltiest of all. Since 1997, and possibly before, they have been using their working-class support to implement policies and pursue ideals that the working-class almost unanimously oppose. Since Tony Blair came to power, Labour has said “Thanks for the votes!”, and then done everything to ignore what a huge number of their voters were actually asking for. The discrepancy between the make-up of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the people who vote for it is outrageous – only 10 of Labour’s 218 MPs backed a Brexit, whereas more than a third of their voters did. When Labour won power in 1997, only 13% of Labour MPs were from working-class backgrounds – it isn’t hard to see why Labour has become so resented by many of their traditional voters.

The main two parties are catastrophic failures; no true conservative could vote for the Conservatives, and fewer and fewer labourers have any interest in voting Labour. When Andy Burnham said that the Labour Party is too much Hampstead and not enough Hull, he was right; and I say that as someone who was raised five minutes from Hampstead tube station. For too long, middle-class Londoners like me have dominated the Labour Party’s membership and parliamentary presence. The Brexit revolt is uniquely working-class. The people who have been pummeled and stomped on have given both the main parties a bloody nose – but unusually, it is a bloody nose that could, and should, prove fatal.

The anti-working-class sentiment is beginning to spread already. On social media, nasty comments about how Remain voters were better educated and wealthier than their Leave-voting counterparts are a dog-whistle attack on the working-class as a whole. Not all criticisms of Brexit voters are rooted in classism – there are genuine concerns about the xenophobia that motivated some people to vote Leave, but there are also subtle jabs at the working-class that are just as disturbing as the more overt xenophobia of some of the Outters. It is not only on social media that there is a contempt for the working-class. Many will remember when Emily Thornberry was sacked from the shadow cabinet after tweeting a mocking photo of a house and white van draped in England flags – a sentiment that is quite common among middle class people in positions of power and elsewhere.

So what should happen now? It is quite clear to me that there is an unholy division within both the Labour Party and the Conservatives. They cannot go on any longer. The ‘broad church’ party-system that we currently have breeds contempt and in-fighting, as shown by the mass sacking/resignation of the shadow cabinet today. Both Owen Jones and Peter Hitchens have called for a complete re-organisation of the way that party politics currently works – and they are right to do so. The odd combinations of people like Frank Field and Chuka Umunna in the Labour Party, and David Cameron and Peter Bone in the Conservative Party shows that something has gone desperately wrong. The parties have long been dying, and we can only hope that the Brexit referendum will finally kill them off – although I won’t hold my breath.

Who would’ve thought it? Ken Livingstone has finally been suspended from the Labour Party for anti-Semitic comments. Not by Tony Blair, who always considered Livingstone a royal pain in the behind, nor by Ed Miliband, Labour’s first Jewish leader, but instead by his close friend and political ally, Jeremy Corbyn.

The response from many of the left-wing Labour members has been predictable: “Antisemitism? In our party? Never!” You only have to scroll through the comments on Owen Jones’ Facebook status explaining why Corbyn was right to suspend Livingstone to see the mental acrobatics that people will go through to defend a man who has said “a real anti-Semite doesn't just hate the Jews in Israel, they hate their Jewish neighbour in Golders Green or in Stoke Newington”, and argued that it is over the top to consider anti-Semitism and racism the same thing.

Ken has a history of ill-considered comments and actions. He said that a reporter who was questioning him was reminiscent of a concentration camp guard, even after being told that the reporter was Jewish. He told two Iranian-Jewish businessmen to “go back to Iran and see if they can do better under the ayatollahs.” He claimed, in a leaked letter to Ed Miliband, that Jews wouldn’t vote for him because they were all rich.

But anti-Semitism isn’t the only reason Ken has been reprimanded by the Labour higher-ups: several months ago he said that Kevan Jones, a Labour MP with depression, “might need some psychiatric help. He's obviously very depressed and disturbed.” He’s also been accused of homophobia, saying that gay Labour MPs had all come out publicly because “if you came out as lesbian or gay you immediately got a job”, but that most gay Conservative MPs were still closeted, even though the Tories were “riddled” with homosexuals.

But the thing that has got Ken in the most trouble is his disconcerting comments about Hitler’s views on Zionism. Now, it’s worth pointing out that even if everything Ken had said (that Hitler was a supporter of Zionism in 1932) were accurate, it would have been in horrible taste, given that this was in defence of Labour MP Naz Shah’s support of the idea that the Holocaust was legal and that the “Jews are rallying”. Ken Livingstone has refused to apologise for his comments on the grounds that his assertions were correct, but he is actually completely wrong.

What Ken refers to, when he talks about Hitler’s support of Zionism, is the NSDAP’s original “solution to the Jewish question”, which was the forced emigration of Jews out of Germany, rather than their “Final Solution”, which was the murder of all Jews. The basis for this proposed solution was not Hitler’s keenness on the idea of the Jewish people having their own state, as is implied by Ken’s suggestions, but rather the desire for a mass exodus of Jews, firmly rooted in anti-Semitism. At first, the Nazis toyed with the idea of forcibly expelling all Jews to Madagascar. However, after this was concluded to be untenable, the Nazis made an agreement (The Haavara agreement) with the Zionist organisation to allow Jews to emigrate to Palestine more easily.

To imply that this agreement had its roots in Hitler’s support of Zionism and Jewish self-determination rather than a deep-seated hatred of Jews contradicts what Hitler himself had already written in Mein Kampf: “while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organisation for their international world swindle.” When he wrote this, according to Ken Livingstone, Hitler was a supporter of Zionism who had not yet “gone mad”.

Despite all of this, the Corbynista “Twitterati” have decidedly declared themselves “Team Ken”. Abuse is hurled at everyone from Owen Jones to Nick Cohen to Jonathan Freedland; anyone who says that Ken has gone too far, regardless of their political persuasion, is fair game. Although there is certainly a degree of truth behind it, the idea that you can be critical of the Israeli government and Zionism without being anti-Semitic is becoming something of a disclaimer in the vein of “I’m not racist but…” and “Islamophobia isn’t racism because Islam isn’t a race”.

Although the membership might have some questionable characters with questionable opinions, Corbyn’s Labour Party is standing firm against antisemitism. John McDonnell has been especially clear about the fact that Labour will not stand for anything that could even be perceived as anti-Semitic. The direction that Labour is moving in is an encouraging one; Corbyn could easily have buried his head in the sand and ignored Labour’s problem with anti-Semites, instead, he has addressed it directly, and has reaffirmed his credentials as an anti-racist. In the prelude to the London mayoral election on May 5th, Zac Goldsmith has already linked Sadiq Khan with Muslim extremists in his recent article in the Daily Mail. Fortunately for Labour, because of Khan’s condemnation of Livingstone’s comments, and because of the Party’s quick action against both Shah and Livingstone, the person who has to worry about losing votes amid racism accusations is not Sadiq Khan.

This article originally appeared on Filibuster UK on the 18th of March, you can find the article here.

Well, nobody saw that coming. After serving as secretary of state for the Department of Work and Pensions for six years, since the start of the coalition government, Iain Duncan Smith has resigned in protest against cuts to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP), the money that is given to disabled people to help with costs caused by a health condition or disability. The former Conservative leader wrote in his resignation letter that, “I have for some time and rather reluctantly come to believe that the latest changes to benefits to the disabled and the context in which they’ve been made are, a compromise too far”. It is difficult to overstate the significance of these words from a secretary of state who has overseen cuts in the billions to the welfare budget.

Although he says in his resignation letter that he is proud of the welfare reforms he has implemented while acting as secretary of state, Iain Duncan Smith’s legacy is nothing to be proud of. The DWP has repeatedly introduced cuts to the most vulnerable, and the latest cuts to the PIP are merely a continuation of the attacks on those who need help the most. During his time as welfare minister, 500,000 more children were classified as being in ‘absolute poverty’, despite the attempts of the government to redefine what poverty is. The number of homeless people is also on the rise – in 2014, the Guardian reported that over 112,000 people declared themselves homeless, an increase of more than 25% since IDS became secretary of state. Although the Department of Work and Pensions sought to portray cuts as incentives to get people back into work, it was not primarily the “workshy feckless” that are so often talked about by the Conservative government who suffered the most – the majority of those who fell into poverty since Iain Duncan Smith took over at the DWP were in work.

But Iain Duncan Smith’s biggest monument to failure is Universal Credit, the welfare benefit launched in 2013 to replace six means-tested benefits, introduced as part of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. Originally proposed at a cost of £2.2bn to the taxpayer, the scheme ended up costing a whopping £15.8bn, even though the number of claimants was reported as being only 14,170 in 2014. It is odd that IDS has resigned over benefits cuts to the disabled when it was reported that the implementation of Universal Credit slashed benefits by £28 per week for 100,000 disabled children and £40 per week for 116,000 who needed extra support for their disability. There have also been claims that some of the roll-out of Universal Credit has been illegal: Owen Smith, the shadow work and pensions secretary, argued that Universal Credit was unfairly discriminating against single mothers, given that a single mother working full-time on the minimum wage would be £3,000 worse off than a mother doing exactly the same work but who happened to be on tax credits.

Another unsavoury result of Iain Duncan Smith’s time as welfare secretary has been the huge surge in the use of food-banks in the UK. The Trussell Trust reported in 2015 that in 2014-15, the trust’s 445 food-banks distributed emergency food that could feed 1.1 million people. 22% of users were referred because of low income and 44% because their benefits had either been delayed or discontinued. Possibly for the first time since World War Two, food has becoming a contentious political issue, and people have been forced to choose between heating and eating, with the Independent reporting in 2015 that, due to the high cost of living coupled with the DWP’s welfare cuts, 750,000 (mostly elderly) people would not be able to both heat their homes and have enough food to survive on.

Although Iain Duncan Smith’s legacy shows that he has overseen some of the gravest crises in living standards for the poorest in the UK, this does not mean that his decision to resign is insignificant. Indeed, the fact that a secretary for the DWP with such a legacy would resign shows just how destructive the new cuts to the PIP are. The results of the new budget are not only significant to the disabled people who are affected by it, they are also politically significant. Although as recently as a year ago George Osborne was seen as the clear front-runner for the Conservative leadership after David Cameron’s premiership is over, this resignation is another huge setback to Osborne’s leadership ambitions, and, in conjunction with the tax-credit U-Turn that he made late in 2015, the momentum seems to have fallen to Boris Johnson after he gave his backing to the Vote Leave Campaign last month. Iain Duncan Smith has made a huge impact in both his time as Welfare secretary, and in his resignation. His legacy is clearly a rotten one, but it remains to be seen what impact his departure will have.

‘It’s the economy, stupid’. The immortal words of James Carville, Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist in his 1992 successful presidential campaign, remain as true today as they were then, and perhaps are even truer in British than American politics: as long as Labour has a muddled message on the economy, it has no chance of winning a general election. Almost all of the Conservative general election campaign in 2015 was built around their ‘long-term economic’ carapace, for while they were seen as stronger on the economy, all other policy areas were untouchable. On the NHS, the line was, ‘we can’t have a strong NHS without a strong economy’, and it was very similar for every social issue. Although this is a strength, it is also a weakness: if the Tory reputation on the economy crumbles, their electability completely crumbles with it.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor was the Tory lead on the economy. From way before the election campaign began, Lynton Crosby was often heard reminding top Conservatives: ‘you can’t fatten a pig on market day’. This was not a warning heeded by Labour, whose ‘fiscal responsibility lock’ was devised only when their manifesto was released. If Labour wants to erode the Conservatives’ superior economic reputation by 2020, they must start now. John McDonnell has been working on improving Labour’s economic standing, but he has gone about it in quite the wrong way; instead of consulting with top economists, he should consult with top advertising gurus. The fact that the Tories’ austerity has been widely condemned by academic economists has done them very little harm because their skill in building a narrative has been so good.

My suggestion is this: Labour ought to bring back some of the Tory posters from 2010, but with a few minor changes. One of the famous Conservative posters had a huge picture of Gordon Brown, with the message “I doubled the national debt, vote for me”, alongside it. An effective Labour poster could have the exact same message, but with a picture of David Cameron or George Osborne. The ‘Google tax’ issue is another thorn in the side of the Tories, and Labour would do well to make the most of it. A poster with the same slogan but with a picture of George Osborne handing a big bag of cash to the Google CEO would be something else that would work. As much as people dislike George Osborne, they think of him as competent, so Labour’s strategy must be to attribute the ever-growing debt to malice rather than incompetence; as much as they have tried to kill it, the idea of the Conservatives as the ‘nasty party’ is still one that lives on in the minds of many voters.

Another brilliant feature of the Conservatives’ campaign team is that they get slogans drilled into the heads of voters. They have recently switched from ‘long-term economic plan’ to the idea that Jeremy Corbyn is a ‘serious risk to our nation's security, our economy's security and your family's security’. The Twitterati might mock their slogans, but they are often very effective, especially when they are repeated so often. Labour needs similar slogans, and ones that focus on the economy are especially effective. My suggestion would be that they repeat, time after time, something like this: “The Tories are giving billions to google, they're giving billions to bankers, and they're giving billions to the billionaires, but they're not giving anything to hard-working families”. This slogan, coupled with the repeated idea that “The Tories doubled our debt”, would do wonders in eroding the Conservative lead on the economy.

One advantage of Jeremy Corbyn being the leader of the Labour Party is that the Tories have dropped their focus on the economy, and largely switched over to issues of national security. Perhaps this is because they think that there is no way that Corbyn will ever be perceived as economically competent, or perhaps it is because they think they will make more progress by attacking his foreign policy. Either way, it gives Labour some room to be the party that talks about the economy, and this is what they have to do if they want to win. The moment that Ed Miliband lost the 2015 election was when he forgot to mention the deficit in his speech to Labour conference. The single lesson that it is most important for Labour to learn is this: look after the pennies (or, at least, be perceived to be looking after them), and the votes will look after themselves.

In the last few days before the Scottish referendum on the 18th of September 2014, Westminster politicians of all parties hurried up to Scotland in a last-ditch effort to save the union. Scots looked from Tory to Labourite, and from Labourite to Tory, and Tory to Labourite again, but to many, it was impossible to tell which was which. For the 45% of Scots who supported independence, Labour made few concessions, nor much effort to appeal to their nationalist instincts. In May 2015, 50% of Scots voted for the SNP, and won fifty-six of the fifty-nine Scottish seats. Scottish Labour were completely routed; their leader, Jim Murphy, failed to win his seat, and the shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander, lost his seat to 21 year-old Mhairi Black.

Labour cannot make the same mistake with the European referendum. The party must realise that a sizeable chunk of their core support, especially working-class voters, are sceptical about Europe and about uncontrolled immigration. On the left of the party, there are concerns about the EU’s treatment of Greece and Portugal. Even on the centre-left of the party, who are most likely to support Britain’s continued membership of the European Union, many are worried about the EU’s lack of democracy and its protectionist tariffs on non-EU goods. Although the bulk of the MPs are firmly pro-EU, there is not so much consensus amongst Labour voters, and many of the voters who are sceptical are ‘soft’ Labour voters who could be persuaded by the offerings of other parties. Labour would be foolish to make the same mistake they made in Scotland: it must be seen as a party where eurosceptics do not feel as though the party is against them.

Lynton Crosby, the Conservatives’ PR guru, has a political strategy called the ‘wedge strategy’. It involves taking an issue which is divisive in an opposing party and ensuring that it is in the headlines to invoke in-fighting amongst the opposition. Crosby used this strategy during his time campaigning for the right-wing Liberal Party in Australia; he made asylum seekers the central issue of the electoral campaign because he knew that the right was united and had the support of the general public, whereas the left was deeply divided and risked tearing themselves apart over it. The Liberals won the election. There is a temptation for Labour to use Europe as a ‘wedge’ by highlighting their unity on the EU and wrecking further havoc amongst a divided Conservative Party. This would be an error.

Although the Conservatives are divided over the EU, they have done a lot to ensure that eurosceptics do not feel alienated as Conservatives voters or members. Even though there is some genuine dismay from the Tory leadership that Boris has decided to campaign to leave the European Union, it is also important for the Tories that they have prominent MPs open about wanting to leave. UKIP pose much less of a threat to the Conservative vote if voters remain keenly aware that there is not much love for Europe within the Conservative Party. Even amongst those MPs who have come out in favour of remaining in the European Union, it is often done ‘with a heavy heart’, as Sajid Javid wrote in his Mail on Sunday article about why he was supporting the Prime Minister. The Tories know that a lot of their core support is sceptical of the European Union, and Labour must know that, although their voters are less likely to vote Out, there are numbers of voters who will be turned off Labour if they appear too enthusiastically pro-EU.

The Scottish referendum changed Scottish politics completely: the SNP went from a party with fewer than ten seats to over fifty. This should serve as a serious warning for those who assume that UKIP will decline as a political force after the European referendum. The referendum could indeed hurt UKIP, but it could also bolster them. It would be mutually beneficial for the Labour Party and the Leave Campaign to give Labour MPs some of the spotlight in the prelude to the referendum: The Leave Campaign would much more likely to capture left-wing people who are sceptical about Europe if they are seen not to simply be a clique of right-wing xenophobes, and Labour are much more likely to appeal to working-class eurosceptics if they allow their anti-EU MPs to campaign freely for Brexit. The Scottish referendum was a disaster for Labour; the EU referendum doesn’t need to be.